Knight International Journalism Fellowships

Brazil: Tapping the Power of Citizen Journalists to Increase Coverage of Poverty

Bruno Garcez is helping Brazil’s top media outlets to include multimedia reports from citizen journalists on important issues such as land reform and pollution prior to presidential and general elections in October.

Garcez is partnering with ABRAJI, the leading investigative journalism association, and the daily Folha de Sao Paulo to incorporate reports produced by trained citizen journalists. Already, 20 citizen reporters in Sao Paolo are producing stories and posting them on a common blog, Mural Brasil.

Garcez also led a public-service journalism course for professional and citizen journalists. The course was modeled after the one James Breiner developed at the Digital Journalism Center at the University of Guadalajara. AT&T gave a $20,000 grant for the course in Brazil. After taking the course, a reporter created a multimedia site that focuses on security in Jundiaí, a town in the state of Sao Paulo.

Garcez, a native of Brazil who worked for the BBC, also is writing the first manual on podcasting, online video and interactive mapping in Portuguese

Our Stories

Blogs

  • Jun 282010

    Second class, crowded room

    by Bruno Garcez

    For the second week in a row we had a packed room.

    A group of 20 students from peripheral areas of São Paulo filled a room with only 14 computers on a gloriously sunny Sunday, and in the middle of the World Cup - worth noting that Brazil wasn't playing, though.

    We touched on quite a few topics on this second lesson.

  • Jun 202010

    The First Video

    by Bruno Garcez

    Yesterday was the first class of the Mural citizen journalist project.

    We got to see the very basics of video.

    But one of our students, Cacau Ras, who already has a good experience in video producing, already produced a little teaser of the first lesson.

    If he's coming up with things like that by now, I wonder what he'll be doing next.

    Next week, we'll come up with some different video tasks for all the students to undergo.

    I'm looking forward to it.

  • Jun 202010

    First Day in Class

    by Bruno Garcez

    I had hopes that, if not all, at least most of the students who assured me they'd be here on the first class would show up.

    Folha de São Paulo, the newspaper where I'm hosted, has 12 computers in the training room I was given access to. Unfortunately the larger room, with 14 machines, was being used by Folha's own trainees and was not available.

  • May 252010

    The Job Is (Nearly) Done

    by Bruno Garcez

    In this last weekend me and assistant trainer Fabiano Angélico concluded the in-presence part of the AT&T funded course Digital Tools for Public Service journalism.

    It took place from Friday, the 20th to Sunday the 23rd at the newspaper Folha de São Paulo’s training room.

  • Apr 152010

    Kick-off!

    by Bruno Garcez

    We're now a few days away from the start of the The Digital Tools for Public Service Journalism course. Monday, the 19th of May, marks its beginning.

    A total of 42 applicants were selected to take part of these three weeks of online training.

    They have a diversified profile. Altogether, 18 of the selected candidates are professionals from the country's media outlets, either newspapers, magazines or websites.

    But we've also chosen a good number of citizen journalists and of reporters working for smaller news outlets: a total of 10.

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